sonicwfandomcom-20200216-history
A Grand Day Out
| released = | runtime = 24 minutes (NTSC) 23 minutes (PAL) | country = United Kingdom | language = English | budget = £11,000 }}A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit, later marketed as A Grand Day Out, is a 1989 British stop-motion animated short film that was directed and animated by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol. In the film, Wallace and Gromit spend a bank holiday by building a homemade rocket to the Moon to sample cheese. The short premiered on 4 November 1989, at the Bristol Animation Festival at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol. It was first broadcast on 24 December 1990, Christmas Eve, on Channel 4. A Grand Day Out is followed by 1993's The Wrong Trousers, 1995's A Close Shave, 2005's The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and 2008's A Matter of Loaf and Death. The short was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 1990 Oscars, but it lost to Creature Comforts, another stop motion animated short film made by Nick Park and Aardman Animation, released in the same year. Plot Wallace and Gromit build a rocket to visit the Moon to sample its cheese. They encounter a cooker. Wallace inserts a coin, but nothing happens. After he and Gromit leave, the cooker comes to life and gathers the dirty plates left at the picnic spot. The cooker discovers a skiing magazine and yearns to travel to Earth and experience the sport. It repairs a broken piece of landscape, issues a parking ticket for the rocket, and is annoyed by an oil leak from the craft. The cooker sneaks up on Wallace and prepares to strike him, but the money Wallace inserted runs out, and it freezes. Wallace takes the cooker's nightstick as a souvenir, inserts another coin, and he and Gromit prepare to leave. Returning to life, the cooker realises that the rocket can take it to Earth and excitedly follows them. But Wallace panics, thinking that the Cooker is mad over the cheese that he is taking, and he and Gromit retreat into the rocket, only to discover that they forgotten to light the fuse. Unable to climb the ladder, the cooker cuts into the fuselage with a can opener and accidentally ignites some fuel. The resulting explosion throws it off the rocket and allows Wallace and Gromit to lift off. The cooker is left on the moon. Initially dejected, it fashions discarded rocket fuselage into skis and happily skis across the lunar landscape. It waves goodbye to Wallace and Gromit as they return home. Production Nick Park started creating the film in 1982, as a graduation project for the National Film and Television School. In 1985, Aardman Animations took him on before he finished the piece, allowing him to work on it part-time while still being funded by the school. To make the film, Park wrote to William Harbutt's company, requesting a long ton of Plasticine. The block he received had ten colours, one of which was called "stone"; this was used for Gromit. Park wanted to voice Gromit, but he realised the voice he had in mind — that of Peter Hawkins — would have been difficult to animate. For Wallace, Park offered Peter Sallis £50 to voice the character, and his acceptance greatly surprised the young animator. Park wanted Wallace to have a Lancastrian accent like his own, but Sallis could only do a Yorkshire voice. Inspired by how Sallis drew out the word "cheese", Park chose to give Wallace large cheeks. When Park called Sallis six years later to explain he had completed his film, Sallis swore in surprise. Gromit was named after grommets, because Park's brother, an electrician, often mentioned them, and Nick Park liked the sound of the word. Wallace was originally a postman named Jerry, but Park felt the name did not match well with Gromit. Park saw an overweight Labrador retriever named Wallace, who belonged to an old woman boarding a bus in Preston. Park commented it was a "funny name, a very northern name to give a dog". According to the book The World of Wallace and Gromit, original plans were that the film would be forty minutes long, including a sequence where Wallace and Gromit would discover a fast food restaurant on the Moon. Regarding the original plot, Park said: }} Home media The short film was released on VHS in the 1990s by BBC Video. It was also released on DVD multiple times, as part of the Wallace and Gromit in 3 Amazing Adventures series of DVDs. In the United States, it was released on DVD in 2009 by Lionsgate VOD and HIT Entertainment. In the United Kingdom, it was released on DVD in the 2000s. Release The short premiered on 4 November 1989 at the Bristol Animation Festival, and premiered in the United States on 18 May 1990. Reception Awards and nominations The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film, but lost to the short Creature Comforts, which was also a creation of Nick Park. Soundtrack The official soundtrack album to the short was released by BBC Records in the 1990s. References External links * *[http://www.wallaceandgromit.com Official Wallace and Gromit website] Category:Animated comedy films Category:Films directed by Nick Park Category:British films Category:1980s children's fantasy films Category:Clay animation films Category:British animated short films Category:Films featuring anthropomorphic characters Category:Moon in film Category:Stop-motion animated short films Category:Wallace and Gromit films Category:Aardman Animations short films Category:Films with screenplays by Nick Park Category:1989 short films Category:1980s stop-motion animated films